International Law - Legal rules for u.s. policy

The past informs the future. For American foreign policy in the
twenty-first century, this realization is critical for assessing what role
international legal rules play in making and carrying out U.S. policy
objectives abroad. The future of U.S. foreign policy still turns on the
costs and advantages of three persistent conflicting impulses: the choices
between isolationism and internationalism, realism and idealism, and
intervention and nonintervention. International legal issues and concerns
lie at the heart of each debate, and American policymakers bear the burden
of reconciling these divergent viewpoints in rapidly changing global
circumstances. The challenges for American foreign policy are daunting,
particularly given the economic, political, and military superpower roles
in which the United States is cast. The threats to U.S. security are no
less menacing, among them: the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction; the degradation of the planet's environment through
natural resource depletion; increased global warming, ozone depletion, and
transnational pollution; pervasive poverty and overpopulation; terrorist
violence; the rise of intrastate ethnic wars that produce genocidal
atrocities and massive violations of human rights; accelerating forces of
interdependence and globalization that make economic, technological, and
electronic penetration of national borders increasingly facile; and the
massive expansion in international commerce, which makes all states
increasingly dependent on (and vulnerable to) others for needed goods and
services.

The United States, despite its preponderant military, cultural, and
economic power, cannot manage, much less mitigate, these global threats
alone. Remedies lie in producing multilateral cooperation, collaboration,
and commitment of mutual political wills among governments. The policy
means for attaining these remedies come through active American diplomacy
that strives to elaborate international legal strategies and agreements
for meeting those ends. The conclusion is clear: international law is far
from being an idealist pipe dream. International legal means are in fact
realistic policy instruments that the United States must increasingly
exercise if multilateral agreements are to be secured on common solutions
and approaches for dealing with common global problems. In a world of
intensifying interdependence and globalization, the United States needs
international law to protect its fundamental national interests.
Similarly, American foreign policy must be formulated in such a way that
the United States accepts the norm of state responsibility to uphold its
international legal obligations. To do otherwise is to ignore the lessons
of U.S. diplomatic history and, more perturbing, to render the world an
even more politically, economically, and ecologically complicated place in
which to live.